Trump’s Return: Six Key Takeaways from the 2024 Presidential Election

Donald J. Trump has clinched the presidency once again, making history as the first president-elect to enter the Oval Office while a convicted felon. The 2024 U.S. presidential election was expected to be a tight race, with a prolonged period of vote counting and disputed tallies before a clear winner emerged. Instead, Trump secured a decisive victory—with results confirmed far sooner than most anticipated.

As the dust settles on this historic election, we turn to experts from New America’s Political Reform program to distill some of the most salient takeaways from this unprecedented moment in American history.

Here are the top 6 takeaways from the 2024 election, as seen through the lens of New America’s Political Reform program.

The “two-party doom loop” is deepening, with American democracy showing signs of stagnation and decline. Voters are increasingly looking for new options outside the established political framework, as evidenced by exit polls showing that self-identified Independents made up a greater share of voters than Democrats this election. This suggests that a moment of crisis may be on the horizon, one that leads to structural reform in U.S. politics. But for now, the polarized two-party system leaves voters with tough choices and no real alternatives when they are dissatisfied with the existing parties.

There was some expectation that disaffected moderate Republicans might shift to support Democrats, but there's no clear evidence from 2024 that this group is large or reliable enough to be a decisive factor. The rigid party system is part of the problem, as there are no political organizations actively working to create and offer meaningful options for this moderate constituency.

The election was driven more by affective partisan polarization—strategies that exploit emotional divides—than by clear ideological differences. While the country may be seeing a policy shift to the right, it’s unclear whether the public has actually moved right in any meaningful way. A major theme of the election was the contrast between the policies being proposed and the mood of the electorate.

For example, in several states where the Republican ticket won, voters approved ballot measures that protect abortion rights. In Alaska and Missouri, voters also backed measures to increase the minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave for workers.

Kamala Harris faced significant headwinds to her candidacy, not least of which was her association with an unpopular incumbent. There’s a dominant anti-establishment mood both in the U.S. and across advanced democracies around the world, where many voters feel the existing systems are failing and need drastic change. This often manifests as anti-incumbent sentiment, which proved to be a major obstacle for Harris’s campaign.

There’s growing support for collective action and new forms of local and hyperlocal political engagement, such as community assemblies and local experiments with alternative voting systems such as ranked-choice voting and proportional representation (e.g., Portland, Oregon, and Washington, DC). These initiatives may signal a broader shift toward more inclusive and representative electoral systems. However, given the defeat of nearly every political reform statewide ballot initiative this election, the appetite for disrupting the status quo may be limited to progressive pockets of the country, making it unlikely that these efforts will scale anytime soon.

Digital spaces have been a key battleground for radicalizing young men, particularly through grievance-based campaigns online and right-wing male influencers. Republican strategies targeting young male voters with grievances against Democrats were more robust—and, as it turns out, more effective—than the Democratic strategies, contributing to Gen Z having the largest political gender divergence of any generation.

While young men and women share disillusionment with the political status quo and desire for bold systemic change, polling suggests that Gen Z women remained in the Democratic coalition due to cultural alignment on social issues and their feeling threatened by GOP rhetoric, rather than the party’s digital campaign efforts to reach their demographic.

Republicans have a clearer vision, while Democrats are struggling to convey a compelling vision of the future. Kamala Harris’s pivot to the center failed to build significant support, highlighting a broader concern that Democrats lack a unifying, forward-thinking narrative. There’s also growing skepticism about whether the traditional framework of political ideology—left vs. center vs. right—remains useful in the current climate. Some Democrats, like Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, seem to have developed strong working-class politics, distanced themselves from the national party, and overperformed this election. But for the party as a whole, Democrats need to continue a conversation on race, vulnerable minorities, and democracy itself. There’s a need to present an alternative, positive vision that resonates with diverse communities.

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